Nelson de Sá
Beijing, China (Folhapress) – In Japan, births decreased for the ninth year in a row in 2024, reaching 720,000, a 5% drop over the previous year, according to preliminary data from the Japanese Ministry of Health.
In South Korea the official statistical body recorded that births increased for the first time also in nine years, to 238 thousand, up 3.6%.
Since the number of deaths exceeded birth in both, there was a drop in the population last year: 897,000 less people in Japan and 120,000 less in South Korea.
The official justifications for the contrast between the two Asian, cultural and geographically close nations have been linked to behavior in relation to marriage.
In the Japanese case, the explanation was that more people are deciding to marry later and that anxiety has grown with the costs to take care of children.
The number of marriages grew to 499,000, 10,000 more than in 2023, but did not return to the levels prior to the pandemic. Still, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba saw in them a promising result and promised to “focus this aspect.”
For its part, the statistical agency of Korea attributed the reaction in births to the largest number of postpandery marriages. There were 222,000 last year, higher level in five years.
Other factors that led to more births, according to South Korean government researchers, were the largest number of people in the 30-year-old and a supposedly more optimistic social vision in relation to marriage and paternity, “a change in social values”.
But even in South Korea there is skepticism as to the persistence of recovery, both at weddings and in birth, raised by non -governmental experts in the local press.
Untilly unresolved problems are pointed out, such as the concentration of the young population in the capital, Seoul, emptying the interior and raising the dispute for jobs.
The phenomenon is similar in Japan, to the point that the government has started to offer bonuses of up to 1 million yen (R $ 39 thousand), in the last two years, to couples with children who are willing to exchange the capital, Tokyo, for smaller cities nearby.
The stimuli for marriage and paternity are even broader in South Korea, which could help explain the reaction in births last year.
Last June, the government even declared a demographic emergency, encouraging large private companies to offer bonuses to employees who have children -and, among other measures, the stimulus for day care and housing and the extension of maternity leave for up to 18 months.
While the numbers in Japan are still preliminary and do not include the rate of total fertility (amount of births per woman of reproductive age, usually considered 15 to 49 years), the South Korean data show that this track also recovered.
Rose to 0.75, against 0.72 in 2023. But it continues to be the country with the worst fertility rate in the world, only in front of Taiwan Island.
Along with China, another culturally close society, all classified as confusion and family -oriented, the four concentrate the global concern with the economic impact of the population fall.
In the Chinese case, data released in early February showed that for the first time in eight years, the number of births grew again. However, as in South Korea, the population continued to decrease.
Beijing announced the acceleration of incentive programs, also similar to those of South Korea, as support for day care centers, housing and maternity leave and paternity.
